Rescued pets getting a second chance

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Appleton Post-Crescent

By Heather LaRoi

If only Harry could talk. What tales he might tell.


Harry, a standard poodle-mix, has seen a lot in what's guessed to be his two years of life.


Rescued from flood-ravaged New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where he was either separated from or abandoned by his family, he was eventually picked up by volunteers with Best Friends Animal Society and ended up at their home base in Kanab, Utah, with hundreds of other animal refugees.


Alas, somewhere along the way, poor Harry, no doubt traumatized by the hell that pretty much destroyed the world as he knew it in August, had picked up a few bad habits. Things like aggression around food and aggression toward anybody trying to pet him, things that pretty much made him undesirable as an adoptable pet.


Enter Joanne Hjella of Larsen.


Hjella, a dog trainer and behaviorist for about 30 years, took up Harry's cause. Looking at the skinny, scruffy, lovelorn Harry, she saw a dog not to be written off, but a dog to be saved.


"So many dogs are being euthanized for absolutely the wrong reason when they can be rehabilitated. And people are not giving them a chance," Hjella said. "I just want people to know these dogs can be rehabilitated.


"These dogs are not born screwed up. They're born very stable and balanced, but it's the people who mess them up. They make matters worse, too, and they don't realize it because they try to communicate with (their dogs) like they're people. They use human psychology when they're not humans, they're dogs."


Hjella, who runs Canine Academy, and husband John have five other dogs, but Harry's her first foster dog. They eventually hope to find a permanent home for him.


"Harry's a special case, a special guy," she said. "We've only had him a couple weeks, but he's already doing a lot better. We can actually pet him when he's eating now and he doesn't growl as much. He's doing real well."


Harry is actually one of at least two dozen dog and cat Hurricane Katrina refugees that found their way to the Fox Valley, as part of the massive and varied efforts to rescue the animals left behind in the disaster area.


The Fox Valley Humane Association had three teams that went down to the hurricane area, bringing back animals. Even now, almost a year later, the call for aid continues.


"We just received an e-mail (this past week) asking if we could take more (refugee animals) and we're looking into that," said Deb Lewis, executive director of the FVHA. "The need continues. I think a lot of it was the fact that so much was destroyed and they had so little in terms of humane societies to start with. Now there's absolutely nothing. In many places they're starting from square one."


Patti Snyder, a receptionist at Kaukauna Veterinary Clinic, was one of those who heeded the call. Unable to turn a blind eye, she and a friend, Sara Maltbey, hooked up with the Seattle-based Pasado's Safe Haven animal rescue organization. The two rented a van and drove down to New Orleans about three weeks after the disaster hit.


She saw firsthand the horrors that faced both man and beast.


"Oh God, how do you begin? It was so much worse than I could ever have imagined," she said. "Every day they had a group of people take cars and go into the city and it was like something out of 'Twilight Zone.' There would be cars and buses that were just left in the middle of the road with their doors open … and the smell was so bad almost everywhere.


"There were a lot of dead dogs. There would be dogs hanging in the trees, and over fences, and a lot of dogs tied up. I found a puppy in a house that had been tied to the dishwasher. I mean, it was just disgusting. Who knows what they had been through? With people, you can tell them 'This is what is happening.' But animals, they have no understanding … plus they've just been abandoned.


"We also came upon a school where dogs had been tied up and were shot, not in the head but in body parts and left there to die. I could barely get past that. But bringing these animals back to the farm at night and seeing them get fed and there were a few vets that were there also, that helped."


Snyder and others with Pasado's Safe Haven, one of many animal rescue organizations that pitched in to help with the disaster, would patrol the streets looking for animals that needed help.


"By the time I got there, very few would come to us. We had to capture them. One day we had a little dog run up to us, but most of them were so scared and they'd be wandering around or hiding under houses. We would lure them out with food because most of them were starving," Snyder said.


"However, there was the humane society and all kinds of other groups leaving food. They'd open a great big bag of food and leave it. But dogs were starting to pack up, so that would scare other dogs away. We would leave food, too, and a big thing of water, but only if we saw dogs and couldn't catch them."


Snyder said she was surprised — in a good way — by the reception searchers got when word got out they were looking for pets.


"I had expected people to say, 'Screw you. We just lost everything and you want to know about a dog or a cat?' But we didn't come upon that," she said. "People were so gracious and so helpful if they would see something. It was truly an inspiration.


"I came away saying I saw the worst of the worst and the best of the best."


When Snyder returned to the Valley, she brought along a boxer, whom she called "Lou" for Louisiana. Because she already has two boxers herself, her plan was to find a new home for Lou here.


As it turned out, however, that wasn't necessary. In something of a minor miracle, Lou's original family and his foster family discovered each other on the Internet and Lou was reunited with his owners, who were staying in Texas at the time.


The overall experience was something Snyder said she'll never forget.


"To be able to get one of those animals to where you could hold it … and after they got past their fear, they were so appreciative. You just knew that. It was written all over them. They were so happy to be with people," Snyder said.


Harry, meanwhile, is regaining some of his bounce — literally. When visitors enter the backyard, Harry repeatedly leaps high into the air in greeting, a trait that has earned him the nickname "Boing-Boing."


"He was a pistol, let me tell you, when we first got him," Kjella said. "I put him on the grooming table because he had hair hanging in his face. They had shaved him because he was all matted, but you couldn't see his face or his eyes and of course I can't train him unless I can see what he's thinking. I reached for him to brush the hair on his face and he about tore my face off. He missed, but he was like a vicious junkyard dog.


"Nobody could pet him on the head. He would just reach out and bite. I think, really, it stems from fear. And the food aggression you can almost understand. He was probably roaming the streets of New Orleans for quite a while, trying to find food. It must have been so scary."


Hjella figures she has another couple months of work with Harry before he's ready to be placed in a new home, but she's confident he'll get there.


"I couldn't touch him before but now I can hug him and pet him. He's really an extremely sweet dog."


Hjella, too, wishes Harry could talk.


"It'd be so much easier to train him," she said, with a laugh. "And you could reason with him like a person or a child. I tell him all the time, I say, 'Harry, you don't have to worry about where your food's coming from. You're always going to have food. Nobody's ever going to hurt you again, right, Harry?'"


Harry's long tail, with its lion-like tuft at the end, wags.


"He's come a long way," Hjella said.